BELLEVUE, WA – A new report from Scotland Yard reveals that a “significant spike in knife and gun offenses” has occurred in the United Kingdom, throwing cold water on the notion that restrictive British gun and knife laws have made that nation safer, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today.

According to Scotland Yard, there has been a 42 percent increase in so-called “gun violence” and a 24 percent rise in “knife offenses” during the 2016-2017 financial year.

“All the rhetoric we’ve heard over the years about how the British solved their crime problem by having law-abiding citizens turn in their guns, and adopting strict knife and gun control has suddenly turned out to be wishful thinking, if not simply wrong,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “Like gun control efforts anywhere, the Brits have disarmed the wrong people.

“It is ironic that this news appears now, as America celebrates the 242nd anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, when American colonists resisted Britain’s attempt to confiscate arms from the militia,” he added. “British gun control then ignited a revolution. Now it is just resulting in a higher violent crime rate.”

The famous battles occurred on April 19, 1775 after someone fired “the shot heard ’round the world.”

Scotland Yard’s report shows something else. There were 12,074 knife-related crimes in the 2016-2017 financial year, which demonstrates that criminals will resort to whatever weapon they can get their hands on against a unilaterally-disarmed public. This has happened at the same time that law enforcement budget cuts are in the news.

“British ruffians are no different than criminals in the United States,” Gottlieb observed. “They will take advantage of any weakness the see, whether in law enforcement or the public’s inability to defend against an attack. This is why we fight so hard to protect our nation’s constitutional right to keep and bear arms, and why our friends across the pond should seriously reconsider how their policies have made their citizens more vulnerable to people who routinely ignore the law.” With more than 650,000 members and supporters nationwide, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is one of the nation’s premier gun rights organizations. As a non-profit organization, the Citizens Committee is dedicated to preserving firearms freedoms through active lobbying of elected officials and facilitating grass-roots organization of gun rights activists in local communities throughout the United States. The Citizens Committee can be reached by phone at (425) 454-4911, on the Internet at www.ccrkba.org or by email to InformationRequest@ccrkba.org.